


don't look (back)

by OnyxSphynx



Series: newmann one-shots [71]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, M/M, Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Compliant, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-10-19 17:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxSphynx/pseuds/OnyxSphynx
Summary: For all he wishes it weren't, it's Hermann who winds up leaving





	don't look (back)

**Author's Note:**

> drsarah1281 asked: "Okay so another super angsty prompt occurred to me lol and I just had to share it. Instead of the usual possessed Newt leaving Hermann, the precursors are worried Hermann might follow so they have to drive him away and ultimately he has to walk away."

“We should probably start packing up,” Hermann says in the morning. Somehow, at some point, party-streamers were introduced into the lab, and now they litter the area, bright red and blue and yellow strips of paper laying on his desk, on his ladder, some even on Newt’s dissection table, the ink leaking where the paper’s gotten sodden.

Newt frowns at him. “Why?” he asks, kicks the cables laying on the floor, and Hermann nearly snaps at him for that, _my side of the room, how many times have I told you_—but, well—

_Sides_ don’t seem to mean much when one’s brain isn’t their own anymore, not really. So instead of snapping, he sighs and says, “There’s no need for the shatterdome to remain in opperation, now that—”

“—the war is over,” Newt finishes.

“Don’t—”

“—finish your sentences?”

Hermann scowls. “_Yes_. It’s unnerving.”

The other shrugs but doesn’t say anything, and they lapse into silence.

* * *

“Tell me, Hermann, do you remember who we were?” Newt asks, one particularly antagonistic day. He’s perched on the edge of his desk, legs swinging, watching as Hermann loads his files off onto a thumbdrive.

“Young?” Hermann asks drily, half-distracted, and not just by the task he’s involved in. 

Newt’s fingers tap at the counter-top, and he peers at Hermann. “_Friends_,” he says, layers the word with enough contempt that it makes Hermann pause, because—

“_Were?_” he asks, tries not to sound hurt, because after all this, he’s thought, maybe—

But the other nods. “I mean, can you believe?” he scoffs, “really, we work _way _better as adversaries.” 

Hermann swallows. “I suppose we do,” he says, and maybe it’s more strangled than he intends, but it _hurts_, it hurts. That’s what he gets for being hopeful, he supposes, because fortune favours the brave, not the damnably, foolishly hopeful. 

He doesn’t want to believe it, of course—who would? But it’s not _unexpected_. He had simply mistakenly assumed they were closer than they actually are. “I suppose we do,” he murmurs, again, more to himself, and tries to focus more on his work.

Newt is uncharacteristically silent, but Hermann doesn’t needle him about it.

* * *

When Newt gets into the lab, late, eyes bloodshot, Hermann can’t help the instinctive “_Where _on earth have you _been_, Newton?” that tumbles from his lips, makes the both of them tense.

“Why the fuck do _you_ care?” Newt snaps, refuses to meet his gaze. “It’s not like you cared about me _before_.” It’s bitter, sharp, and leaves Hermann gaping, because he’d though the Newt _knew—_

So he swallows and says, “Yes. Well. When it’s negatively impacting your ability to work—” because that’s what Newt expects, what he _wants _himself to expect. It’s easier to deal with the chasm growing between them if he pretends he doesn’t care.

“Oh, yes, _work_,” Newt sneers. “That’s all that ever matters with you, isn’t it—your precious _numbers_—”

“As if _you’re _any better!” Hermann exclaims. “Day in and day out all I listen to is ‘oh Hermann, look at this piece of kaiju kidney’, ‘oh Hermann, did you know—’”

In his frenzy, he’s strode over to Newt’s side, swept a beaker off the table, and it falls to the ground and shatters. The sound snaps the both of them out of their argument, and they stare at the broken pieces of glass, shocked.

Hermann suddenly realises he’s crossed a line—both metaphorical and literal, the yellow hazmat tape behind him, and he backs away. “My apologies,” he says, useless, hollow, and practically flees the room.

* * *

In the end, it’s Hermann who walks away, in the most literal sense of the phrase.

He doesn’t expect Newt to accept the offer—hell, he doesn’t expect Newt to _get _the offer in the first place, but he does, and maybe Hermann should’ve seen it.

Maybe he’s just been ignoring the signs all along.

“You hate the private sector!” he protests, trying to keep up with Newt’s brisk pace, wonders, briefly, when the other stopped slowing down for him. “Newton, this isn’t—”

The other whirls to face him, and the expression on his face is just the tinniest bit feral. “How would _you _know that?” he demands. “You barely even _knew _me before we were forced together in Hong Kong!”

“I—” _I thought I did_, he almost says. _I thought I knew you long before then_.

He swallows, leaving the sentence to hang, and Newt grins at him, jagged. _See? _says his expression, except there’s something else there, too, and he says, “You could come with, dude—I bet Shao would love to have you.”

“_Me?_” he scoffs, “Newton, are you out of your _mind—?_” 

“No, think about it!” Newt exclaims. “All of the work we did here, _together—”_

“There was nothing done_ together,_” Hermann hisses, “half of the time my work was hindered by your _inane _tangents and insistence on disrupting my work—”

He cuts himself off, because that’s _not _what he’d intended to say, but it’s too late, and the damage is done. Newt sets his jaw, blinks a few times. “Fine,” he says. “Okay. That’s—that’s fair. But Hermann, we can start over—”

“_No_,” Hermann says. “You don’t get to throw away our—our—” _relationship_, he means—“whatever we had, tell me that it never had any value to you and distance yourself from me and then try and—and—rebuild it, Newton! That’s not how this _works!_”

When he stops, he’s out of breath, but it feels good, almost, to have said it, to let the beast free of its cage, _feel _his emotions, just for a moment, instead of bottling them up and pretending everything’s okay, because it isn’t, it _isn’t_, and _he _isn’t, and acting like he is is just picking a scab until it’s bloody.

He breathes, deeper than he remembers being able to in a long while.

Newt stares at him, wide-eyed, an then—

Hermann turns away, unwilling to see what plays across his face, says, “Goodbye, Newton. I hope you’re happy.”

The corridor seems darker as he walks away from Newt, but he refuses to look back.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at [harrowwharks](https://harrowwharks.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
